KING REIGNS Stacey King, a regal 6 ft. 10 in. center, is Oklahoma's man when it comes to scoring or speaking

STACEY KING, JOURNALISM MAjor and media darling, has stoppedtalking. This is news. KING MUTED! OKLAHOMA'S GABBY CENTER RENDEREDMOMENTARILY MUM. The cause of the pause is the question he has justbeen asked: How would he write the lead to the story of his life?Within a minute or so, over an untouched hamburger at lunch inNorman, Okla., King recovers. ''I'd make people cry about me,'' hesays. ''I'd write about all the problems I had, and then, whoosh!It'd be like: 'Stacey King, battling back from adversity, gradeproblems, not being able to play, finally got his chance.' ''A promising start. Since getting that chance last season, when hemoved back into the starting lineup, the 6 ft. 10 in. King has becomethe kind of player made for the pros -- and for prose. He was rarelyat a loss for anything in 1987-88: points (22.5 a game), rebounds(8.6 a game), blocks (100, a school record), nicknames (the King, thePearl, Sky, the Juggernaut, Ceramic -- take your pick), Soonervictories (35 in 39 games) or words.Especially words. Ask for an autograph and you'll get a page-longpreamble. Ask a question and the answer will be multiple choice. TheKing is warming to the assignment now:''I'd say, 'Here's a guy who has everything going for him. He'llprobably be a millionaire, and he handles everything in order. He's aregular guy, doesn't go around driving a sports car or borrowingmoney. Just a guy who doesn't want to be on a pedestal. A guy who hasfun.''But it wasn't always fun, as he's quick to point out. As asecond-semester freshman, King lost his eligibility, largely becausehe didn't make it to classes as a first-semester freshman. ''WhenJack Frost was nipping at my toes, I was in bed,'' King says. ''Mymom said, 'Boy, you'd better go to class or you'll be sitting downnext semester,' but I didn't listen to her. And sure enough -- boom!-- I'm sitting on the sidelines in my street clothes, cheering like acheerleader.''The King family of Lawton, Okla., is not fond of excuses, and itwasn't having any from Stacey. His father, James, is a formerdefensive end at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark., and anartillery first sergeant who served 25 years in the army, includingtwo tours in Vietnam. On one of those tours he earned the Soldier'sMedal for bravery when he drenched himself in water to battle a firethat was threatening to blow up a munitions dump. James is thestrong, silent type, though some would say he has no choice in thesilent part. Stacey's mom, Lois, isn't shy when it comes to speakingher mind. When, as part of its recruiting strategy, Oklahoma sent awine-red limo to pick up Stacey at Lawton High without consulting hismother, Lois was livid. ''We want him to work hard and get a goodeducation and not think that life is a bed of roses when most ofthe time it's a bed of thorns,'' she said.''My mom was a real hit in the newspapers,'' Stacey says. ''Shesaid, 'I don't want my baby to go to Oklahoma. I want him to be ableto read a stop sign.' ''So Lois was hardly happy when Stacey's grades dipped. ''We didn'thave a Leave It to Beaver-type conversation,'' says Stacey. She sathim down with a pen and a piece of paper, made him write one list ofgoals and another of priorities and then had him explain both to her.The goals included graduating on time and developing each year as aperson both on and off the court; the priorities were studying hard,not worrying about peer pressure and understanding the value of hiseducation.''I told him, 'Anytime you think you might want to get off on thewrong track, you take these out and look at them and say I wrotethese for my mother,' '' Lois says. King made the dean's list thenext semester, and his grade point average is now a respectable 2.6.

King's academic woes and the way he overcame them are now favoredtopics, especially when he speaks to youngsters, as he recently didat the Central Oklahoma Juvenile Treatment Center in Tecumseh.''There are always ways to get into trouble, like killingsomebody,'' King said. ''There's always something to do. People arelike ants. They see one guy trying to get on top, and they try topull him down to the bottom of the pile, because that's where theyare.''Now, I have the highest respect for nerds. They realize there'ssomething out there they want, and they're going to do whatever ittakes to get their goal. They'll sacrifice parties, they'll sacrificewalking on campus and having people laugh at them because they wearfunny clothes and glasses. They'll risk that to get ahead, and theyare ahead.'' King talks for 20 minutes, and it's clear from theattention the kids give him that his remarks hit home.After a scrimmage between the center's teachers and the visitingSooners, a girl asked King for the shirt off his back. He gave herthe sweat-drenched gray T, and she hugged it lovingly. Would she washit? ''I don't know. Maybe in a couple of weeks,'' she said.''Kids are great because they're curious about everything,'' Kingsays. ''You tell them it's raining, and they'll look at you and say,'Really?' ''In high school King was much the same player he is today -- quick,running the floor well, with a nice touch around the basket and aknack for blocking shots -- but he weighed only 180 pounds, 50 lessthan now, and he was a 90- pound weakling when it came to pumpingiron. Now he can bench 235. ''After I graduated high school, I aboutsprouted from 6 ft. 7 in. to 6 ft. 10 in.,'' King says. ''I was realthin when I came in here, real thin. I'd be lifting weights trying togain weight; then we'd run on the track and I'd lose it. After we gotdone running, I'd go back out to see if I could find it. I nevercould.''

KING EARNED A STARTING SLOT as a freshman, but then came his gradetroubles. He started again as a sophomore, but he was inconsistentand was benched. ''That zapped my confidence,'' says King. Herecovered it before last season, when Sooner coach Billy Tubbs toldhim, ''Your time in the sun is coming. Make sure you have sunglasseson, because it's going to be bright.'' As the year began, opposingdefenses were geared toward stopping Harvey Grant, Oklahoma's other,more heralded low-post man. King got off to a fast start and neverstopped; while Grant suffered from flu in midseason, King scorchedIowa State for 55 points, 30 rebounds and 10 blocks in back-to-backSooner wins. The King became the Juggernaut. ''That's like a guywho's wreaking havoc everywhere,'' he says. ''But in basketball, it'sa guy who's playing well, who's got obstacles in his way but cannotbe denied.''''Stacey has come around,'' says Tubbs. ''But I still think he hassome room for improvement. He may have just scratched the surface.''

A creature of habit, King follows the same routine before everyOklahoma home game: He rubs a 12-year-old rabbit's foot in his dormroom and lovingly touches three Michael Jordan posters on his walls,contemplates a picture of his late friend Len Bias, whom King had meton a recruiting visit to Maryland, goes to the bathroom and prays,takes extra shooting practice at the arena, winks at his mother inthe stands, and then wishes each of the three referees a good gamewith a pat on the butt. ''If I'm being nice to them, they might giveme a break,'' King says.Away from basketball, King indulges his interest in writing,whether for The Oklahoma Daily, for which he recently did an articleon the goals of the university's mentorship program for minoritystudents, or a four-page letter that convinced a judge that King hadnot run a red light and hence should not have to pay a $65 fine forthe alleged violation. The judge isn't the only one he has tried toset straight. This year he has been giving tips to his youngerbrother, Darryl, who was the Oklahoma high school player of the yearlast season and is a freshman at Midland (Texas) Junior College. ''Ithink I'm better than Stacey,'' the 6 ft. 9 in. Darryl says. InLawton, Stacey is actually thought of as shy and retiring compared toDarryl.Despite his verbosity, Stacey has seldom put his foot in hismouth. He always credits his teammates: ''If I had a knife, I'd cutall the awards I've won in half and give each player one.'' He criedafter last year's 83-79 loss to Kansas in the NCAA final, anespecially painful defeat because the Sooners had handily beaten theJayhawks twice during the regular season, and because King hardly sawthe ball in the second half. Publicly he credited the victors, and hehas many kind words for Kansas star Danny Manning: ''If I had topattern myself after a guy, it'd be him.'' And he shrugged it offwhen John Thompson made him one of the last cuts from the U.S.Olympic team: ''Hey, that's as the cookie crumbles.''''Maybe Stacey's future is not only in basketball but inpolitics,'' says Tubbs.Or maybe it's in journalism. A little sleuthing about one of hisnicknames uncovered that when Stacey was a kid he used to play withhis mother's pottery a lot. Hence the tag Ceramic. ''The press canfind out anything!'' marveled King, when confronted with this info.''Don't ever do nothing bad.''Which is a fitting end to the story Stacey King began.